<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<meta charset="UTF-8">
<title>The scars that we carry by Joels_revolver</title>
<style type="text/css">

body { background-color: #ffffff; }
.CI {
text-align:center;
margin-top:0px;
margin-bottom:0px;
padding:0px;
}
.center   {text-align: center;}
.cover    {text-align: center;}
.full     {width: 100%; }
.quarter  {width: 25%; }
.smcap    {font-variant: small-caps;}
.u        {text-decoration: underline;}
.bold     {font-weight: bold;}
</style>
</head>
<body>
<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/25811863">The scars that we carry</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Joels_revolver/pseuds/Joels_revolver'>Joels_revolver</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>The Last of Us (Video Games)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Father-Daughter Relationship, Fluff, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Scars</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-08-09</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-08-09</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-05 11:47:52</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,971</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/25811863</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Joels_revolver/pseuds/Joels_revolver</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>After a near miss with a bullet, Ellie patches a very reluctant Joel up and discovers something about his past that Joel would rather she'd not know.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Ellie &amp; Joel (The Last of Us)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>8</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>222</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>The scars that we carry</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Ellie’s knee is jerking up and down. She casts an impatient look down the corridor of the school they’re staying in to where the bathrooms are. </p><p>Nothing.</p><p>Ellie sighs. Joel is taking a really long time. He had assured her multiple times that he was fine and could take care of the wound on his own, but that was almost an hour ago and Ellie is getting worried. Joel hadn’t even let her see the injury, she only saw the blood on his jacket and for a “scratch” it had seemed like quite a lot.</p><p>After another five minutes go by without a sign of life from Joel, Ellie gets up and strides towards the bathroom stalls.</p><p>She knocks. “Joel, you okay in there?”</p><p>She hears a muffled “dammit,” so at least he’s not dead.</p><p>“Yes, just give me a minute,” he calls back.</p><p>“You said that an hour ago, Joel, how many more minutes do you need?”</p><p>“Just… wait, alright? I’m almost done.”</p><p>Ellie rolls her eyes. “This is stupid. Look, I’m coming in, okay?”</p><p>“No, don’t-!”</p><p>Too late. Ellie has already opened the door.</p><p>Joel has his back to her, his <em>naked</em> back. Jacket and shirt lie next to the sink, as do a few bloody rags.</p><p>
  <em>Just a scratch my ass.</em>
</p><p>Through the mirror Ellie can see that Joel has one arm curled around his chest, hand over his wound on his rips, the other hand he has in his face, pinching the bridge of his nose between his thumb and forefinger.  </p><p>“Let me see,” Ellie says, approaching Joel quickly.</p><p>“You don’t have to-”</p><p>“Joel? Shut up and turn around.”</p><p>Honestly, sometimes Ellie wonders which of them is the teenager.</p><p>Joel turns around, very reluctantly, without looking at Ellie. His eyes are fixed on a spot somewhere over Ellie’s head, his left arm grasping at his opposite shoulder. That does not hide the jagged scar that ropes itself over his chest, though. Thick and messy it runs from his left collarbone down over his pectoral, stopping just underneath it. </p><p>It’s not pretty, but Ellie never took Joel for the type who feels self conscious over his scars. Least of all in front of Ellie. They’ve patched each other up so many times, leaving behind a fair share of scars, none of them pretty. Ellie thinks about the scar on Joel’s abdomen and a lump forms in her throat at the memories of the scariest weeks of her life. She swallows it down. Those days are long behind her.</p><p>Ellie takes a careful glance at Joel’s face. His gaze is still stubbornly set on the opposite wall, jaw clenched into a tight line. She dutifully pretends that she didn’t see the scar and turns her attention to the wound on Joel’s side. As expected scratch doesn’t even come close. A bullet had grazed him, leaving behind a sizable gash, blood smeared around it from Joel’s attempt at cleaning it up. A few stitches are already in place, though not very far. Ellie is not surprised. At this angle Joel would sooner have broken his neck trying to get a look at it, than done some proper stitches.</p><p>Idiot, Ellie thinks fondly and continues the stitches where Joel has left off.</p><p>The silence between them is strained, only interrupted by the steady drip of the faucet and sharp intakes of Joel’s breath.</p><p>Ellie tries to work as efficiently as she can. God knows she’s had enough practice, but it’s hard not to get distracted by the line of broken flesh on Joel’s chest. Her eyes wander sideways every so often, then upwards to Joel’s stone faced expression.</p><p>It occurs to her, not for the first time, that she hardly knows anything about the man Joel was before their paths crossed. So much of him is still a mystery, although Joel does open up to her more now. He even talks about Sarah sometimes. Just a few sentences here and there, but it means the world to Ellie, knowing that she is one of very few people to have gained his trust.</p><p>Ellie soaks these rare moments up like a sponge. Every bit of information she gets about Joel is stored in her mind and what used to be a pretty blurry picture of the man she traveled halfway across the country with is slowly but surely gaining sharpness.</p><p>She remembers one time, a few weeks after they first started traveling together, she had asked why he still wears that broken watch. A mistake as it had turned out. Joel had given her a dark look and barely talked to her for the rest of that day. That evening he had sat by himself, stroking his thumb over the shattered glass of the watch. The grief etched so deeply in his weathered face had startled Ellie and she had turned away, feeling like an intruder.</p><p>She had never asked about the watch again. </p><p>The next day Ellie had had trouble keeping up with everything Joel told her about the days before the outbreak. It had been his way of apologizing, and even though he never told her anything about himself, she had appreciated it.</p><p>Ellie rarely asked Joel questions after that, for fear of driving him away. Now though, she feels confident that she has place in Joel’s heart just as irremovable as the old man had one in hers. There’s no driving him away anymore.</p><p>Ellie decides to ask the question they both know is burning on her tongue.</p><p>“So. What happened there?”</p><p>Joel’s eyes squeeze shut for a moment, his mouth tightening into a straight line. “A near miss with a knife, that’s all.”</p><p>Ellie hums, her eyes back on the stitches. “Maybe you should get a tattoo,” she says in an effort to lighten the mood, “ I have it in good authority that they do an excellent job of covering up scars.”</p><p>Joel huffs out a laugh. “Sure,” he says and Ellie can see he’s grateful she didn’t poke further.</p><p>“It’s a hit with the ladies,” she says with a suggestive lift of her eyebrows.</p><p>“Yeah, well…” Joel clears his throat, a blush rising up from under his bearded cheeks, “not much of a ladies man anymore.”</p><p>“Anymore, huh? I’m sensing a story here.”  </p><p>“Sense all you want, you ain’t getting one.”</p><p>“We’ll see. I can be very persuasive.”</p><p>“Don’t I know it,” Joel mutters.</p><p>Ellie finishes up on the stitches and tosses Joel his shirt. “Here,” she says, “although you might wanna find yourself a new one, this one has seen better days.”</p><p>Joel catches the shirt in one hand, throwing Ellie a grateful look. And it’s not about the shirt, that much Ellie knows. Maybe she'll leave this one alone.</p><p>***</p><p>Later, after they’ve had their dinner, they’re sitting around the fire in silence. It’s comfortable this time, although Joel has this far away look in his eyes he gets sometimes. Ellie knows when Joel looks like this there’s no talking to him. Ellie knows, because she gets that look, too, sometimes, when thinking about Riley and Tess and Sam… and David. When that happens Joel always sits down next to her, not saying anything, just letting her know he’s here and ready to listen when Ellie is ready to talk.</p><p>Ellie is doing the same for Joel now. It means an evening spent in silence, but that’s okay. There’s no person on this earth Ellie is rather silent with than Joel.</p><p>“It was an ambush.” Joel suddenly says. He’s staring at the fire, a haunted look in his eyes. “We were running low on supplies, so we decided to hide out by the road, wait for some poor bastard coming our way.”</p><p>Ellie halts in her breathing. It dawns on her, what Joel is talking about here.</p><p>
  <em>I’ve been on both sides.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>You kill a lot of innocent people, then?</em>
</p><p>Ellie has a feeling Joel is not the innocent one in this story.</p><p>“Along came this group, maybe half a dozen, just… normal people trying to get by. And we started shooting. It was over pretty quickly, those people had no clue. We were looting the bodies, when I got jumped by this woman. She was screaming, her knife at my chest. She had a wild look in her eyes.” Joel is staring into the flames as if he can see the scene play out. “I saw myself in her, Ellie, someone who has lost everything. And for a moment I thought about letting her use that knife on me, giving her the satisfaction.” He falls silent.</p><p>“What happened?” Ellie breathes.</p><p>Joel locks gazes with Ellie over the fire. His eyes have lost their haunted quality, instead they are cold and hard and Ellie almost flinches away under their intensity. </p><p>“I wrestled the knife out of her hands and killed her.”</p><p>His answer doesn’t come as a surprise. Ellie is not even shocked by the brutality of it. She has always known Joel can be a brutal man, but she has never feared him. When she looks at Joel’s face, however, his eyes trained on the fire again, she can see his fear. It’s subtle, but it’s there, in the slight tremble of his lips, in the way his eyebrows draw up into lines of worry. Joel is afraid of what Ellie will think of him, she realises. Silly old man.</p><p>When Ellie looks at Joel, she doesn’t see a killer, she sees a fighter. Someone who has suffered indescribable loss but didn’t let that beat him. She sees a survivor, a protector. Someone who teaches you how to play the guitar, how to swim, someone who thinks of the best birthday presents. Ellie looks at Joel and feels safe. Even more than that, she feels grateful. Ellie looks at Joel and sees a father.</p><p>“Joel.”</p><p>It takes a moment, but Joel lifts his gaze to hers, honest, not trying to mask his expression.</p><p>“It’s alright, you know,” she says. “I know you. And I know you’re not the ruthless killer you think of yourself.”</p><p>“You sound very sure about that.”</p><p>“I am,” Ellie says with absolute certainty. “I’ve seen you kill people, Joel, and I’ve seen those hunters back in Pittsburgh kill people. You’re not the same. You don’t enjoy it, you don’t take pleasure in killing. You’re not that kind of man.”</p><p>Joel studies Ellie’s face and whatever he finds there seems to satisfy him. He nods slowly, his worry lines disappearing from his features.</p><p>“For the record,” Ellie says, “I’m really glad you didn’t let that woman use her knife on you. Well, not much at least.”</p><p>This time when he looks at her, it’s her Joel again, the one with the soft smile and warm eyes. </p><p>“Me too, kiddo,” he says, “me too.”</p><p>Ellie knows that’s not the end of it. Talking about that one day doesn’t cover twenty years, but for the moment Ellie feels content to let things rest. </p><p>“So,” she says with a smirk, lying back on her sleeping bag, “any chance I can bribe you into telling about your days as a ladies man?”</p><p>“Ha, not a chance.”</p><p>“I have a bag of coffee beans at home.”</p><p>“No you don’t.”</p><p>“Oh yeah, how would you know?”</p><p>“You hate coffee. Every time you find some, you immediately give it to me.”</p><p>Ellie thinks back on the last time she found coffee beans and realises that Joel is, in fact, right. “Well, I’m never doing that again…”</p><p>“Fine. I’ll just keep all the comic books for myself then.”</p><p>“You’re so unfair. I’m going to sleep.”</p><p>“You do that,” Joel says and Ellie can hear the amusement in his voice.</p><p>She turns on her side, her back to Joel. The smug bastard doesn‘t need to see the smile on her face.</p>
  </div></div>
</body>
</html>